About Damn Time
Posted on June 3, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 77 Comments
I mean, really. Thank Christ.
I’ll have more to say tomorrow. Until then, the floor is open to your comments.
Whatever
FURIOUSLY REASONABLE
WHATEVER
Taunting the tauntable since 1998
John Scalzi, proprietor – JS
Athena Scalzi, contributor – AMS
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What a historic day. Our first African-American Presidential Candidate. I’m so glad it has happened in my lifetime. I was scarred that maybe we would remain ignorant as a country until way past my time. Thank God.
And of course Clinton is speaking now, keeping up her discredited line that she won more votes, inciting her supporters to believe that Obama wants to ignore them, their votes, and their issues. She has talked only about herself and her supporters since the first minute or two of the speech. It seems quite clear thus far that she is not going to leave the race. She is making it clear that her supporters should not forgive Obama for winning the contest. And it’s working; her crowd is right now chanting “Denver! Denver!”.
In other words, she is poisoning the well, either because she isn’t getting something she wants (the veep slot? the supreme court? help with her unprecedented campaign debt? an actual policy preference?), because she’s planning ahead for 2012, or because she is locked in her own narcissistic bubble and can’t help it.
Ah well, with her wealth it’s fine for her and hers if the Republicans win.
@#1… well, it was either African-American or woman; either one would have been a rather historic event!!!
I think Obama just got himself a presidency… no way this country is gonna let another Republican militarist run all over it!!! (Although this does beg the question of how our current President got re-elected….)
@Warren Terra
That is so very on point. I felt like I’d been slapped when she threw out that line about making sure “every vote in America got counted”.
So.
Much.
Bullshit.
Warren @2… really? That’s unexpected. Really unexpected.
And very disappointing.
Hopefully Clinton will see the wisdom of conceding. I like her a lot, but it is time for her to step aside.
I can haz new black prezzident now please?
Now…The real fun begins. I expect to see lots of both candidates and their stand-ins here in Youngstown.
You know what I think is most inspiring? That for so many people, “African American nominee” seems to be an afterthought. I mean, really, technically, we can’t have an “African American” nominee, if only because the guidelines for the American presidency, as set forth in the Constitution, require that all candidates be native-born. Obama was born in Hawaii, which means, technically, Dave Matthews is more an African American that Barack Obama.
Fact is, Barack Obama is an inspiring, charismatic, brilliant human being, regardless of his father’s country of origin, and I, for one, will cast my vote for him. Being a new resident of Denver, I, for one, cannot wait to make my way to wherever the DNC will be on the off chance that I might shake this man’s hand.
Obama & Edwards: Yes We Will
Of course she’s poisoning the well…if Obama wins, he’ll run as incumbent again in 2012, and she will be 69 when the next election in 2016 rolls around.
If she manages to torpedo Obama, and he loses the election to McCain, Hillary will have another shot at the brass ring in 2012. She doesn’t care about the country or the Democratic Party, only her personal ambition.
chang@7: I’ll just be happy to have one that isn’t an idiot.
Um, hi, people? Did you READ the CNN page? Voting in Montana has been closed for all of 23 minutes, and everything on that article is “expected”, “planned”, “may”.
Quit counting your chickens. GOSH. Wait til the results are in to squee like little girls, k? You’ll just feel bad if it turns out Obama doesn’t get all the delegates he is EXPECTED to.
Thank Christ?
Isn’t he supposed to be on the other side this election? Just us godless pagan atheists over here, right?
I’m listening to his speech right now. I’m relieved he’s the winner. I’m elated. I wish I were at the Xcel Center in St. Paul right now with my friends watching this speech . . . and I’m sad I worked so late that I had to miss it.
He’s the first candidate in my lifetime that I’ve been excited to vote for . . . he’s the first candidate that I don’t feel is the better of evils, but instead just the better.
@#12 Because of the proportional delegate allocation rules Obama could lose Montana in a blowout and still get the one or two Montana Pledged Delegates he needs to cross the finish line. As long as Obama doesn’t lose by 70% in Montana, he’s over the top. Are you suggesting that might happen?
Julia:
According to the AP, he had all the delegates he needed earlier in the day. And he certainly has them now. Try not to lecture people for celebrating the obvious.
Marko@10: That’s my assessment. Sabotage is Lady Hildemort’s primary weapon now. If she sinks Obama, she can go back to the Democratic Party hierarchy and say, “See, I told you so!” And it puts her in the catbird seat for 2012.
McCain may have a golden opportunity here…if the SOB can just take advantage of it. (Yes, he’s an SOB. But his only saving grace is that he’s at LEAST two orders of magnitude better than the Hildebeast or Obamalamadingdong. It’s thin gruel, but it’s the only hope we’ve got.)
Anyway, anybody who thought Hillary would just give up THIS easy…man, what were you SMOKING?
@Julia (12): Clinton supporter, I take it?
The delegate counts confuse me — can someone explain this? According to dailykos, Obama has 2,117.5, and Clinton has 1,920; 2,117 were needed for victory. But it also says that there are 203 delegates left, which — if they all went to Hilary — would put her over him.
I like Obama’s weather control powers!
“This is the moment!”
All kidding aside, THAT is what I call a leader. No snark. All meat. Classy.
Also, that bit he said at the beginning “… even if he chooses to ignore mine.” That’s quotable.
Finally. This will be the first time in my adult life that there is a presidential candidate that I want to vote for.
well, i have tended to vote Republican in most elections since 1984, i may vote for Obama.
She doesn’t strike me as having a whole lot of gracious honour or sportsmanship in all this.
O-BA-MA
O-BA-MA
O-BA-MA
This is a man who can lead a movement for change in our country and in our world. What a change from the idiot we have now.
Scalzi, I’m from Florida. 2000 dies hard, as does 2004.
Forgive me for not assuming what is supposed to be obvious. I would rather wait.
Don’t let them get to you, Julia… At this point, Clinton is going to be trying to convince delegates (super and mundane) to switch to her. (That’s assuming she truly believes as she seems to be saying, and is willing to destroy the Democratic Party so she can run as the Presidential nominee. I’d really like to think she’s only staying in at this point to continue to raise money to pay off her campaign debt.)
I for one am glad that this year we get to vote for another nominee with little experience like we did in 2000.
At a local barbershop near you:
“Did ya hear tha gonna put a Negrah in the White House?
// Purposely Inflammatory
I recall a radio program that compared Obama (favorably) to Lincoln, Kennedy, and King.
About 15 Min later, I realized….
….All Three Were Assassinated!
MMmmmmm.
Oh, and I like Obama because he has the balls to say “Yes” and “No” to questions.
Sure he’ll tapdance around a question too, but the straight answers are one of the things that perks my interest.
“@#1… well, it was either African-American or woman; either one would have been a rather historic event!!!”
Technically, a woman head of state isn’t that historic. There are several today. Even ‘macho’ Latin America has one. And Pakistan had one. Margaret Thatcher was made leader of the Tories 33 years ago.
And that’s ignoring royalty.
There have been NO first-world countries with a black head of state. That’s historic.
(Technically, the current Prime Minister of Sweden has an African-American great-grandfather, but he looks about as ‘black’ as John McCain, so he doesn’t really count, as it’s doubtful racism would play any part in his ability to reach office.)
Just consider recent movies about heads of state. Female heads of state are represented by Elizabeth I, and Elizabeth II.
Black heads of state are represented by… Idi Amin.
“Sure he’ll tapdance around a question too, but the straight answers are one of the things that perks my interest.”
I liked that when asked “what’s your biggest flaw” (or something to that effect) he didn’t do the usual and answer “Saving children leaves me no time to heal the sick” or “My stigmata have occasionally left stains on tablecloths.”
For those of you who want Ms. Clinton to throw in the towel, go to :
http://www.hillaryclinton.com
like I just did, and tell her how you feel.
She ASKED for it.
As for the numbers, you don’t have to be way over. One is enough. Anyway, if Obama was 50 over the half-way point, Hillary would still be demanding that we wait until every vote is counted. Meanwhile, behind the scenes her folks would try to get committed delegates to break their election pledge and vote for her.
@19 – I think the most likely explaination is the fact that some of those delegates are from Florida and Michigan still. The numbers have to be close — 2117.5 is only just over half, thus why whomever got there first is the nominee.
1920 + 203 = 2123 -2117 = 6 * 2 = 12 Florida and Michigan undecided superdelegates, if my math serves me correctly. That’s just some off the cuff hypothesizing, though, there may be another explaination for it.
ytimynoma@2
easy answer: theft
That said, based on her past tactics, I would not be suprised to see her keep trying to pry the wheels off until after the election is over.
So the Queen Bitch is defeated. Mission One, accomplished.
Now comes Mission Two: Beat the Snob.
Then Mission Three: find a way to somehow get power out of the hands of the DC elite and back into the hands of the people where it belongs.
As for those who called the Snob a “true leader,” above: yes, I suppose you’re right. He’s a perfect leader for modern American politics: a fiery, eloquent (when he has a script to read), dedicated, passionate, naive, foolish, elitist, ignorant, arrogant, narcissistic, amoral, dishonest, dishonorable socialist. He’ll make a wonderful president for the Clueless Left. For the country as a whole, he’ll be an unmitigated disaster.
And in four years when gas is six or seven bucks a gallon instead of four, the dollar is worth a quarter what it is today, Iraq and Afghanistan are again terrorist states, Iran has nuclear weapons and is using them to dominate the Mideast, we’re in an economic recession that threatens to become the first world depression in eighty years, and the Snob still insists on appeasing our enemies while raising your taxes and government spending, well …
… will you still be stupid enough to re-elect him?
30: Black heads of state are represented by… Idi Amin.
Or if by some chance one is aware of news past the 1970s, the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada.
@#37
I realize I’m terribly ignorant about our Neighbors to the North (and if you can recommend a good history of Modern Canada, please do; I picked one up once, but it was a snoozer), but Wikipedia, which everyone knows is an unimpeachable source, informs me that the Queen is the Canadian Head Of State.
And the Governor General is certainly not the Canadian Head Of Government.
37: 30 was talking about movies, not reality. There’s no movie about Michaelle Jean that I know of, though perhaps the CBC has put out their typical dreck. I know *I* don’t watch that channel.
38: Well, she’s the Queen’s representative whenever the Queen isn’t in Canada. Which is, um, often.
James Nicoll: “Or if by some chance one is aware of news past the 1970s, the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada.”
I was talking about in recent films (biopics, really), contrasting the British queens (Elizabeth I in Elizabeth and Elizabeth 2: Ye Electrick Boogaloo; the current Elizabeth II in The Queen) versus Idi Amin in The Last King Of Scotland.
And according to Wikipedia, anyway, the Governor General isn’t the head of state, but rather is the appointed representative of the monarch.
37: And if we’re talking effective rather than ceremonial heads of government, Canada also had Kim Campbell as its Prime Minister for much of 1993. She didn’t last very long (in fact, the election that put her out of a job stripped her party of all but two seats in parliament), but still, for a while she was the most powerful politician in the Great White North.
The Governor-General of Canada is a figurehead. He actually has less power in Canada than the British monarch has. They both have pretty much zero influence, but the queen appointed the G-G, so she at least has that much power.
Re: #38, I would like to find a good history of Canada also. I tried to read one, but it had NO MAPS! What kind of a history book has no maps? So if anyone knows a good history, let us know.
Speaking as a Canadian with (technically) no vested interest in all this I have to say I’m pretty bummed. I mean I like Obama and I think he wants to do good things for your country…I just don’t think he will. Maybe I should amend that…I just don’t think he can. He reminds me a lot of another young democrat who became president. He was smart as hell and idealistic, who attracted an arguably even smarter and more idealistic staff. They were going to fix gays in the military, health care, social inequality. And then they got horrifically spanked by the reality that is life in Washington and, despite two terms, accomplished far less than would have been achieved had they entered the situation with less zeal and more experience, less idealism and more pragmatism.
And, yeah, Bill not spreading presidential loving all over a little blue dress would have helped, but not as much as you might think.
The point is, in many ways, Barack Obama is Bill Clinton circa 1992. Well meaning but naive and headed for a big damn fall. Hillary is Bill Clinton with 16 years of hard won experience. She’s less about promise and a bright future than Obama and this is not a bad thing. She’s now smart enough to pick the fights that A) really need to be fought and B) that can actually be won. She’s also tough enough to not just win those fights but survive the inevitable fallout from them.
Make no mistake if I was a U.S. citizen I would be voting for Obama, but I think there’s gonna be a lot of disappointed head shaking in a few years.
#36: If “snob” is Republican code for someone who actually knows things, someone who can speak in sentences that have a subject and a predicate, and someone with an attention span long enough to actually do his job, then, hot damn, I’m voting for the snob.
Because, you know, when we get to the point that someone who actually paid attention in school is automatically dismissed as some kind of elitist, we may as well just start a national going-out-of-business sale.
Bob @ 44
Well said.
@30: I still think having a female head of state in *this* country would be historic. While it may be common in other countries (and constitutional monarchies DON’T count,imho!), it would be a first for *my* country, and I think that counts for something!!!
@36: I like Obama because he’s opposed to NCLB, the war in Iraq, and tax breaks for companies sending jobs overseas. Not because he’s handsome, passionate, good-looking, or particularly eloquent.
And I take comfort in the fact that, no matter who is elected, he will be very limited in his power. He can only sign bills into law, not introduce them. He can only direct our troops for two months (I think?) without Congressional approval, and cannot declare war (though our current President seems to have gotten around that one quite nicely, eh? “Let’s declare war on an *idea*! They can’t say no to that!”). Though he is the figurehead of our country, the President is *not* the ruler of all that everyone seems to think he is.
Going to go with McCain in ’08.
I have nothing against Obama at all but I do honestly believe that we need an experienced hand at government this go around and I am just not seeing that with Obama. The guy wasn’t even in the Senate the FIRST time I went to Afghanistan. Got lots of problems that need fixing after the last eight years, not sure we can afford a learning curve on our future leader.
Just my two cents.
Chris wrote: “I have nothing against Obama at all but I do honestly believe that we need an experienced hand at government this go around and I am just not seeing that with Obama.”
Yeah, because all that experience in the Bush administration did us so much good.
McCain has experience. He doesn’t have good judgement.
George Lister wrote: ” She’s now smart enough to pick the fights that A) really need to be fought and B) that can actually be won.”
Like when she proposed a flag-burning amendment?
@47 Don’t you think it’s less important to have someone who’s pulled lots of levers before than it is to have someone who will pull the right lever?
#47 Neither Obama nor McCain have an experienced hand at governing. Legislating and Governing are two very different jobs. McCain is an experienced legislator.
Who the two pick as their VP, and their top cabinet positions, will have a large role to play in their ability to lead this country in the direction they want to go.
Whether or not I want the country to go in that direction is personally going to have a greater impact on my vote — but I do realize some would prefer to move a mile in the wrong direction than a few yards in the right. (And I have hope it will be more than a few yards.)
I know the point of this post was Obama and Clinton, but I find it mildly ironic that someone who is generally so snarky about religion would “Thank Christ” for anything.
John, #16
Delegates for Barack Obama…
Committed: 1753
Pledged: 366
Committed delegates must, according to Democratic Party rules, vote for the candidate they are committed to. Pledged delegates have said they will vote for a particular candidate, but they are free to change their minds.
As I understand it, if the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States is not selected on the first ballot, all delegates are free to vote as they please. We have a few weeks until the Democratic National Convention, and a lot can happen in the next few weeks. Patience is called for, for celebration can still prove to be premature.
John H & C.Pasley,
I would have to say that I disagree with you. McCain has backed his nation and President in war-time but IMHO remained nuanced enough on the subject (personal experience, I briefed him 4 months ago here in Irq) that I think that he would be a more effective in bringing this war to an end in a responsible and measured manner than a guy who has no military, foreign policy, or national level experience of note. Agree with the war or not (and I never agreed with us going into Iraq), we are in it and just saying it is over is not a realistic option anymore.
My regard for McCain extends way beyond the war. I think his stances on campaign finance reform, immigration (huge for me for personal reasons), and free trade are good positions that I approve and are certainly not in keeping in line with the President’s positions over the past eight years.
Bottom line for me is that while I like Obama’s speeches and he seems like a decent enough sort, I am not willing to take the leap of faith that many Obama supporters seem to be willing to make to entrust our governance to a completely inexperienced (at the national level) man at a point where our country is facing many difficulties that require a great deal of effort, imagination, and knowledge to fix. I just can’t do it when there is a sufficiently competent alternative with a proven track record available (no, I don’t buy that he is a Bush clone folks. You can argue that he is not the right guy, but I am just not seeing that assessment is being legit).
Regards,
CDO
Alan Kellogg is right. At this point, Barack Obama is the presumptive nominee. Of course, strictly speaking, so is McCain. We always celebrate when we have a presumptive nominee. However, Obama’s position is a little more tenuous than McCain’s since the only way he was ever going to get enough normal delegates to win outright was if Hillary Clinton fell off the face of the earth and everyone forgot who she was. (Imagine how embarrassing it would have been for Obama if he had lost races to someone who wasn’t even actively campaigning. That sort of thing has happened before.)
It’s highly unlikely that enough remaining superdelegates will back Clinton for her to change this result, but it’s theoretically possible. Superdelegates can support whomever they want for whatever reason they want, whenever they want. If they want to support whoever won a hypothetical national vote count, they can do that. If they want, they can even decide it’s ok to count FL and MI, but not four caucus states which never published their vote count, for that purpose. After all, it’s not who hits the magic number first, it’s who hits the magic number during the convention. We forget sometimes that the nomination actually happens at the convention. (Funny that given how much we’ve talked about adhering strictly to the rules during this campaign.)
I honestly don’t think Hillary is trying to poison the well. It is not in her best interest to be known as the person who dashed the Democrats’ chances in 2008. Given the way Democrats take care of their own (which is to say, not at all), this would end her career. It’s clear that she wants something. She’s already expressed privately that she’d consider the VP spot. This may be her way of campaigning for VP. (The most face-saving scenario may be the one where he offers so that she can refuse it.)
Personally, I like the scenario where Obama assumes her campaign debts and she becomes a Supreme Court Justice. The Senate would hardly fail to confirm one of their own. She has a splendid legal mind. I’m sure she’d hold her own against Alito, Scalia, Roberts, and Thomas. She’d serve as a corrective.
Having said that, yay Barack! If the impossible should happen, yay Hillary! I’m happy with either one of them. If the bizarre should happen and we get the Obama-Clinton ticket, yay both of them! I’d be happy with that too.
Speaking as a Swede: Kudos to Americans for nominating the best candidate regardless of skin color. Well done!
And what a difference it’ll make, having a president who can say “nuclear” and not mangle the English language!
As for the suggestion of making Hillary Clinton VP: I can’t stand the sight of that woman, after her loathsome “White Americans support me” statement. Please, can’t someone tell her to Go Away.
John H @ 30
Technically, a woman head of state isn’t that historic.
Neither is a black man.
There have been NO first-world countries with a black head of state. That’s historic.
Well now there’s a qualification for you.
I would point out, however, that Zimbabwe was pretty close to a “first-world” nation before Mugabe ran it into the ground.
And if I remember correctly, South African President Mbeki is a black man and his country has a higher GDP than Ireland, Finland and Israel and is comparable to Denmark.
@55 I’m sure the Obama campaign would be willing to offer her the VP slot as a face saving gesture if they knew for sure she would decline it, but how can they trust her? Nothing she has done in this campaign has fostered the trust such an act would require.
Elitist?
Sorry, but I think that one of the best things Obama has going for him is his popularity amongst the college educated and youth segments of the population.
Its about time we had a chance to discuss issues intellectually instead of knee-jerkedly.
Jason:
“I find it mildly ironic that someone who is generally so snarky about religion would ‘Thank Christ’ for anything.”
I’m not generally snarky about religion. I’m specifically snarky about people who use religion as a shield to cover their own neuroses and hatreds. A small but telling difference.
Historic? Certainly… A good idea? Doubtful…
I refuse to support anyone who says we should live our lives here to please others (in reference to his comments about us driving SUV’s and eating fast food, etc…).
I refuse to support someone who would openly support a church for 20 years that backs Farakhan and supports the “liberation doctrine” (I work with people who go to such things, I have worked with people who go to such things, there is no way a person spends 20 years in there and does not come out backing it as well).
I refuse to support someone who is essentially saying “can’t we all just get along” to people who are dedicated to wiping another land/people off the face of the map.
I refuse to support someone who believes a “carbon footprint tax” is a good idea.
I refuse to support the concept of a nationalized/socialized healthcare system (and this coming from a contractor who is diabetic and can’t get insurance 99% of the time). The concept, if looked at honestly, does not work near as well as the PR would have you believe and yes, I *have* lived in such systems on several occasions.
I refuse to support someone just because it would be “historic” or some such nonsense. Sorry, but it must be my “half-breed” genetics that causes me to not have enough “guilt” to do it.
Bottom line, I don’t like anything the man stands for really and if anyone thinks a politician from Chicago will really bing “change” to national politics, then they deserve what is coming.
I only need to ask, when does it end, man? I even got tired of Jon Stewart making fun of the politicking.
I think it would be more convenient if he was a one-legged, black, female, midget with Down Syndrome so we could get a whole bunch of historic firsts out of the way.
clvrmnky
I only need to ask, when does it end, man?
John McCain, New Orleans, 3 June 2008
Patrick M
I think it would be more convenient if he was a one-legged, black, female, midget with Down Syndrome so we could get a whole bunch of historic firsts out of the way.
Are you proposing Donna Shalala for President? Oh. Wait.
She’s not black, is she.
Frank – It helps that her sexual orientation is in dispute. I can’t believe I forgot to include the gays in my wish list.
I mean, seriously, what harm could a President do anyway? We have a 3 branch government which has checks and balances. We are clearly the perfect Democracy. You could put a chimp in office and still have a fully functioning government. What could a chimp do? Invade another country? Not with the checks and balances we have in place…
#66 Patrick M.
What harm, you ask…..
How about McCain’s plan to continue to shred the constitution?
See this:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/mccain-id-spy-o.html
regarding his plans to continue warrantless domestic spying. I find that,his plans to be in Iraq for 100 years, his anti-choice and anti-science stands rather upsetting for the leader of the free world.
Still pondering whom I will vote for, but at least I have a more considered choice now. With Hillary it would have been a clear decision on who not to vote for.
Does anyone but I believe that Obama would be either very brave or very foolish to invite Hillary as the veep? Given her general drift towards the deep end as things progress, and her clearly desperate and spiteful nature, I’d be thinking about hiring food tasters and wearing a kevlar vest IN-side the White House. Four years of looking over your shoulder for Brutus’ knife is a long time, even if only politically.
Although I would be tempted, I have to admit, to go out and find another strong female democrat for a running mate if for no other reason to snub her….but that’s me, I carry a grudge.
So, last night I happened to flip on the TV (I’d already read all the new lols on Icanhascheezburger) and happened to catch Obama’s speech. I was just thinking, “man, this guy is good,” when an ABC reporter started talking over him like a sports announcer describing a play. Then, it cut him off mid-sentence and went over to that idiot Stephanopolous. I was flabbergasted. My gast was flabbered.
I don’t watch much TV these days. Is it always that idiotic?
McCain’s support for illegal warrant-less wiretapping and other violations of the constitution (in an act of taking Bush’s violations and running with them) sunk any chance I’d vote for him. Even if I didn’t like Obama, I’d end up voting for him to prevent McCain from solidifying (or attempting to solidify) the over-reach of executive power as exercised by Bush.
I’m old-fashioned in that I like my President to at least respect the Constitution, even if we disagree on the specifics of it’s implementation. Bush appears to consider the Constitution as an impediment to his goals and nothing more. I don’t know what McCain’s feelings are…but if he’s willing to continue Bush’s misguided policy of “If you’re innocent, you have nothing to hide” and “I’ll tell you if I think you need to know when I break the law or violate the Constitution and why“.
Not to mention that McCain just isn’t going to able to invoke the spectre of terrorism and make it seem as frightening. People are less affected by the threat of terrorism than they are $4/gal. gas, unemployment, housing problems and having to take off their shoes at the airport while waiting for a flight that gets cancelled. Bush let the terrorists win and even did their job for them, in the hopes of political gain.
The fun part starts now, of course. The front page over on HillaryIs44.org currently opens with the words:
“Obama is unelectable and not qualified to be president.
On the night Obama lost South Dakota he spoke in the same hall in which Mondale conceded to the Reagan landslide
Obama will either concede now or in November.”
And in the comments, Obama supporters are vilified and castigated for being “just like Bushies” with “no sense of reality”.
Oh boy.
“I mean, really. Thank Christ.”
I read that as thank Crist, and thought “What the hell did HE do?”
John, I apologize.
Thanks, Jason. No worries.
@71 Miko, you might want to tell them that the Excel Energy Center was built in 1999 and opened in 2000. It’d have been a hell of a trick for Mondale to concede there unless he delayed his announcement for a couple decades (now that’s persistence).
What Obama did was stake out his position here, on the stage where the Republicans are going to have their convention. Basically in alpha male fashion he took it and made it his and when they come along he’s going to have great imagery showing he was there first, more eloquent, and with better ideas than they have. It was a brazen move.
Nick, #69
The MSM works under the assumption that you and I are blithering idiots who need to have everything carefully explained to us. The typical reporter has the same ear for people a rock critic has for music.
This is nothing new, journalism has been in the business of patronizing and belittling their audience for centuries now. A reporter is a perpetual 15 year old convinced he’s just now learned that bad things are going on, and that the grownups around him are too stupid to see it.
The media hates and fears bloggers because we keep revealing their utter incompetence at applying makeup, and being exposed as sociological teeny boppers embarrasses them.
The NY Time has announced that Ms. Clinton is going to suspend her campaign and endorse Mr Obama on Friday.
http://www.nytimes.com/?emc=na